East of the canal, Rideau Street has historically acted as a fuzzy dividing line in central Ottawa — (upper) Sandy Hill had grand houses with servants, where prime ministers slept; Lowertown sold live chickens and butchered hogs, a place where hookers walked.

Even today, a woman named Donna, 64 and street-worn, is panhandling on the frigid sidewalk in front of the Rideau Centre, buried under a dark blanket, having come from a tent where she sleeps near Hog’s Back, to hold up a sign that says “God bless you” for your pennies. Just a few steps away, one can admire a mid-blue Hugo Boss overcoat on the rack at Nordstrom for $1,296.

So Rideau was and is where rags meets riches. Maybe it is bred in our bones.

But something important happened at the Ottawa Police Services Board late last month that felt like a tipping point in this 150-year-old braiding of poverty and prosperity.

Downtown Rideau, a business improvement board normally pretty chipper about the future, painted an alarming picture about the state of crime, vagrancy, “lawlessness” and general disorder its members are contending with — without enough police assistance.

After a massive investment in the Rideau Centre ($340 million) — and, in truth, it has never looked better — the merchant presentation was a cry for help, an appeal to police to put more boots on the ground to deter crime, loitering and vagrancy — in effect, for the public sector to do its share by dedicating proportional resources.

How bad have we let things get?

Consider that even the Ottawa Gatineau Hotel Association is worried about the safety of visitors staying in the heart of the city. Imagine what a first impression that makes at the concierge desk.

“Many hotels are clearly concerned and some have stopped recommending Downtown Rideau and ByWard Market as tourism destinations after dark due to safety concerns,” wrote president Steve Ball, who has 50-some hoteliers in his group.

“I do think there has been an increase in gun use, from back in the day,” he said, referring to his longtime experience with Downtown Rideau. (Only Friday, a man was found with a gunshot wound in the 200 block of Rideau.)

“(Hotels) continually get asked by guests, ‘Where should I go and what should I do?’ They have a responsibility to send them to safe places and know what the policing situation is.”

Donna Holtom owns Holtz Spa — which has been operating on Rideau, near the corner of Sussex Drive, for 32 years — and is the current chair of the Downtown Rideau Board of Management. In other words, she’s seen and heard it all.

“We have this discussion over and over and over again,” she said Tuesday, expressing no confidence in the latest police plans for greater Rideau. It needs a co-ordinated approach, from all stakeholders, she said, to address the issues of homelessness, addictions and the mental health of the disadvantaged — not just more badges and blue uniforms.

“This is what is lacking. The political will. You look at many other major cities. When they decide enough is enough and they want the health and wellness back into their core, they make it happen.” (Witness New York, many say, and Times Square.)

Downtown Rideau estimates $1.1 billion has been invested in the greater Rideau area since 2014, while the city invested millions in attracting tourists here for 2017.

“And what are we doing? We drive tourists into an area that is an embarrassment for the city and the national capital area. It simply does not make sense.”

The “policing situation”, boiled down to hard truths, is this: there are fewer foot patrols, it probably isn’t going to get better, many of the problems are social, not criminal, and pouring merchant money into private security might be here to stay.

Ottawa police Supt. Mark Ford, who directs front-line operations, has met several times with Downtown Rideau. “From their perspective, their perception is their reality. We do appreciate that.”

Before the force began a new “service delivery model” in January, there used to be a beat patrol unit with 12 officers, two of them supervisors. Now there are four foot patrols for the city’s central area, but those numbers are abetted by, in the summer, the bike patrol officers.

“That letter kind of caught us off guard,” Ford admits of Downtown Rideau’s suggestion it rarely sees a uniformed foot patrol. The new model allows more flexibility and less segregation between units, meaning officers can be directed to wherever the need is, he explained.

“We certainly heeded their comments and we’re looking to see that our officers are there and as visible as possible.”

He also said it is “absolutely” true that many of Rideau Street’s problems are social — poverty, homelessness, addictions, mental illness — and police have limited means to fix them, especially on the sidewalk.

“The police are merely a Band-Aid to the problem,” he said, when asked about regular panhandling. (Indeed, sidewalk Donna admits she’s had many tickets, been hauled off to jail, yet returns.)

Others point to the confluence of issues that made 2017 an especially trying year in the area: the influx of tourists for Canada 150, the opening of a rogue safe injection site, the sprouting of pot shops — developments that contributed to charges of “lawlessness” in the city’s core.

“Everybody wants more resources,” said Ford. “We have to work within the constraints that we have.”

Read a certain way, the remark means this: the merchants will have to pony up with their own plans, and they have. Downtown Rideau spent more than $115,000 in 2017 in a street ambassador program that is part tourist-adviser, part eyes-and-ears for police. It will be back in 2018.

Holtom does not so much cling to the idea that downtown is at “a tipping point” in terms of public outrage. If anything, without any real action, things may get worse.

She pointed to a burst of development at the east end of Rideau, bringing more residents to the area, but recently established safe-injection sites — which are to have hands-off, drug-dealing zones — are around those areas.

“It’s been a problem that hasn’t been effectively addressed for the last 25 or 30 years,” said Holtom. “We’re at this moment in time when the solutions have to be driven by the city.”

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